One of my closest friends both loves me and cannot stand me simultaneously. (Come to think of it, several of my friends love me and kind not stand me simultaneously. I am Schrodinger’s friendship?) Anyway, the reason they love me is because I am loyal and adoring and the human equivalent of a chonky Golden… Read more Happy Birthday to My Friend Alis
Long before John Knox first blasted his trumpet about the ‘monstrous regiment of women’ rulers, the fear of a female head of state was considered just and natural in Medieval Europe. Several kingdoms had codified Salic Law from 500 AD onward to prevent a woman from inheriting a throne. In the 12th century, England had… Read more The Medieval Fear of Women Rulers
Gender is a culturally negotiated process. A child is born sexed (or more rarely, intersexed), but only acculturation can ascribe gender. The child learns to behave in the manner associated with his/her biological sex, either masculine or feminine, in accordance with sociocultural praxis. Gender, like biological sex, has also historically been constructed by Western culture… Read more Biology is Not Gender
There are some advantages to be a middle-aged woman with Asperger’s syndrome, and one of those is that I lived through the 80s as a teen and remember it. And what I remember is that Johnny Depp was known as a ‘bad boy’ with a ‘temper’ and a substance abuse problem prone to attacking people.… Read more Johnny Depp’s History of Violence
Our middle child was born a biological female on 1 May 2007. This summer, that child informed us that his biological sex was a physical misrepresentation of his true gender. That, in fact, he was a boy in his heart and his mind. Thus, we now have a son. His name is Scott, and we… Read more Behold, Our Son
Last summer my family and I took a trip to Cornwall (which is gorgeous), and while there we discovered the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. It was both fun and informative, which is what I like from both museums and tourist attractions, so I can recommend it. Of course, as someone who writes nonfiction history,… Read more Medieval Folklore of Stones
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. ( Ecclesiastes 1:9) While the terms ‘transgender’ and ‘gender dysphoria’ are new, the phenomenon of believing yourself to be trapped in the body of the ‘wrong’ gender is not. There is archeological evidence of… Read more Medieval Understandings of Being Transgender
I’ve written about Dunning-Kruger Effect before, but some things bear repeating. The first part of the Dunning-Kruger effect found that, in a nutshell, dumb people will always think they are smart because they are too dumb to know how much they DO NOT know. Smart people will always understand that they aren’t that smart, because… Read more I Wish Facts Mattered More
I had an epiphany about certain cultural realities almost 20 years ago. At the time, I was newly married, in grad school studying medical anthropology, and living in Dallas, TX. I had been reading copious amounts of scholarly works about ethnicity and culture. I had been trying to explain habitus and systemic racism to undergraduates… Read more The White Fragility About White Privilege
I was a transgender ally, even before my son came out as a trans boy. I was shocked and appalled to learn that not all feminists are trans allies. Some feminists are flat out transphobic. They insist biological sex is the only aspect that truly counts in gender identity, and cis women are the only… Read more Controlling the Dialog